Whenever we get inside the front doors of Millard Care and Rehab, Skitter prances her way to Mom’s room. She doesn’t dilly-dally. She makes a beeline for Mom. When Mom notices us at her door, she is quick to say, “Hi, Skitter! What are you doing here?” (To heck with me or Suzanne. Skitter is Mom’s favorite by a mile. I don’t blame her.) Skitter then leaps up on Mom’s bed, and snuggles as close to Mom as she can get—where she remains for the duration of our visits. During our last couple of visits, Mom has sort of forgotten Skitter was by her side. In fact, she almost ignored Skitter once Skitter got up on her bed—to the point that Suzanne and I have been extra worried about Mom’s state of mind. But when we visited Mom a few days ago, Mom was back to her old Skitter-petting self. They were inseparable. Whew! When it was time for us to leave, Skitter would not get off the bed, even when Mom did. Suzanne had to physically remove The Skit from Mom’s space.
Suzanne’s leg is a focal point of one of these photos for a real reason. I thought I should document Suzanne elevating her leg on Mom’s bed because her foot was swollen. She and Mom had a dandy time commiserating about the woes of their swollen feet. What a couple of exciting broads I was hanging out with! For the record, my feet don’t swell. Except for that time when I was 16 and discovered I was suddenly allergic to bee stings—and at the old Delta hospital, the nurses had to cut my new Nikes off my feet because all my appendages were swollen up like I was auditioning to be the Hulk in a movie. Or Popeye with his spinach-ed arms.
During our visit with Mom, we laughed so much that I can’t remember what silly thing Mom was laughing about so hard she covered her mouth as if pretending she didn’t say something irreverent. But isn’t that a great picture of Mom looking like the mischievous dame she is? She can say anything she wants, and she gets away with everything she says because she’s so Old Gangsta Old Lady about it. And also because what she says is usually both funny and dead-on about the topic being discussed. BTW Check out how Mom is not wearing her purple housecoat for the first time in a long while. And note her bigly flower ring and brooch. She was stylin.’ She says she couldn’t get her earrings on that day.
For my part, I wore my pig earrings for the visit because Mom likes to see them so much. I wore my bee socks for her, too. She mentioned many times how much she liked my brand spankin’ new bejeweled Bow Tie o’ the Day. Mom does love to see the bling! We took her some shrimp and some sugary treats, too. It was all for Mom. It always is.
FYI The weather is not looking good for our scheduled flight from SLC to Portland in the morning. To that news, I say, ” &*+($^#@!*^~#^@$#^^&!!!” That mess o’ symbols was my silent swearing. Rest assured, those words are not silent in my head! 😡
I wanted to spend a few hours with Mom before we left on our quick trip to Portland this week, so we jumped in Abra the Maverick over the weekend and drove to my beloved Deltabama. (To be honest, I think I love my hometown more than it loves me.) Mom is not just a cool person—she is a wonders-of-the-world vacation destination. Spending even a tiny amount of time with her is a rejuvenating experience, even though her mind is not as steady or accurate as it once was. She has one of those rare spirits that remains optimistic at all times. Her compassion and fun spills over onto those around her. It doesn’t matter who you are—Mom loves the real you. Mom has always been a come-as-you-are kind of woman. Oh, don’t be fooled: she sees your mistakes and imperfections. But she sees that you are so much more than your worst qualities. She loves you even when you struggle to be better. She loves you because you try to do better. I’ll write more about our visit in this afternoon’s post.
I’m busy getting ready for our Portland trip to see Bruce Springsteen in concert on Saturday. We’re supposed to fly out tomorrow, but SLC is about to be hit by a major snowstorm later today and tomorrow, and I’m betting our morning flight is going to be delayed or canceled. I’ll keep you updated. Must. Not. Miss. Bruce!
I sat down this morning to write a TIE O’ THE DAY post about our evening out for Valentine’s Day, when this photo from 10 years ago popped up in my Facebook Memories. Because it stars the fabulous and fashionable cola-drinking dame otherwise known as my mother, there is no way in heck I’m not re-posting it here for her fans to see. In these incomprehensible times of division and daily lunatic conspiracy theories, I think we could all benefit from a Big Helen ambiance whenever we can get it. She’s just so darn content with who she is. Chill out like Mom, folks.
FYI That’s the late Araby, the dog of my life, swooning at Mom’s feet. Even dogs worship Mom.
Yesterday, Skitter and I packed our various water bottles into the truck and headed south to spend some time with Mom. It was a no-brainer for me when it came to choosing Tie o’ the Day for the occasion. The tie had to be Mona Lisa—a tie o’ beauty for a visit with my beautiful mother. Skitter and I were surprised to find Mom wasn’t wearing any earrings. It’s been quite a long while since we’ve seen her ears naked. She also didn’t mention my earrings, which she always does. She did mention liking Skitter’s tie a number of times. Of course, she remarked about Mona throughout the visit. She also made a bigly deal about liking the taco socks I was wearing. Mom told me she is content with not doing much anymore. She said, “All my life I did everything, all the time.” She took a long pause, looked into my eyes, and said, “But not all of me is here anymore. Do you know what I mean?” I told her I knew. I did not tell her how many years I’ve already missed so much of her. Nor did I tell her how she sometimes melts farther away from me, even as I am sitting right next to her. And I certainly didn’t tell her how helpless and ineffectual it makes me feel that there is not one damn thing I can do for her to make it stop. 🕯
TIE O’ THE DAY presents a photo of Mom and her only child—my big brother, Ron. He and Marie drove up to spend some time with Mom over the weekend. According to Dad, all of Mom’s five children are “only children,” because that’s how she loves us. Yup.
According to one Xmas present Suzanne gave me, my behavior last year got me onto Santa’s “naughty” list. I tried so hard to be good, but I won’t argue about the results. I trust Suzanne’s judgment. I didn’t just get a regular lump o’ coal for Christmas, I received a “Big Ass” lump o’ coal—in the form of an oversized bar o’ soap. I know the lump o’ coal soap is a sign I was bad, but the soap smells so heavenly I might want to earn a spot on the naughty list again this year, so I can be gifted another mellifluous “big ass” bar o’ charcoal soap for the sole purpose of washing all of my bad away.
It might surprise y’all to know that Mom has surpassed me in being naughty every year, for decades. She’s better than me, even at being bad. Every Christmas, she got an entire mountain of coal as a present from Dad. Visions of toasty fires, 24/7, in our living room fireplace danced in her head. I kid you not: Mom started a fire in the fireplace upon the occasion of late September’s first chill, and that fire kept going until at least April. She took great pleasure in feeding the fireplace one lump o’ her naughty coal after another, through winter and far into spring if the temperatures were still wintry. Yup, around the holiday season, Dutson’s would deliver at least a half-ton of coal chunks behind our house. The taller the coal pile, the happier Mom was with it. Mom thought it was the best gift every year. She tended to the fire in the fireplace as if it were one of her grandkids learning to swim. She kept her eye on the fire’s progress, and fulfilled its every need. Mom’s fire always gave off perfect warmth and was maximum gorgeous. She loved her lumps of coal, and she loved telling people that a pile o’ coal was the Christmas gift Dad thought she deserved. 🔥
I wasn’t available to post yesterday. We made an early Xmas visit to Mom’s kingdom, for my true Christmas morning. I knew I would wear the leg lamp Tie o’ the Day for our visit, because Mom loves it so. But she also likes the tie on which Richie wears—and abhors—the bunny pajamas. I decided a two-fer festive Tie o’ the Day was necessary for our get-together. (She made a bigly deal about how much she liked my “ugly sweater”-ish green holiday jacket.) Skitter was a constant at Mom’s side, in all her elf-collar glory. When I pulled the phone out for pix, Mom playfully showed off one of the soft peppermints we brought her. I showed Mom a couple of Christmas “stockings” she had made me over my kidhood, and she remembered them, mostly. As you can see in the first photo, Suzanne and I found Mom the perfect Santa hat for her gift: it matches her purple housecoat AND it sports a tiara—befitting Mom’s eternal Queen Bee status. As Mom drank from a convenience store Coke with lots of ice—which she said her friend, Dot, had brought her earlier that morning—she said to me and Suzanne, “I’ll drink FOR you, and TO you, and WITH you kids—for ANY reason, ANY time.” She was having such a good time. She sounded like she had been drinking eggnog with extra whisky in it. I’ll have to quiz Dot about what she really put in that drink she brought Mom.
I still have much to do before X-mas. I’ve got to remember where I hid the gifts I got for Suzanne so she wouldn’t find them. I secreted them away so brilliantly I can’t find ’em yet. I have to wrap our gifts for Mom, including the many candies she likes. We try to stick with sugar-free goodies for Big Helen, but we seem to “accidentally on purpose” make a habit of not being able to find sugar-free versions of what Mom likes. She’s my mother, so she will always get what she wants from me—which is real sugar. The list o’ my remaining Christmas tasks is long, so breaks are necessary to my sanity. So on this break, I’m just sittin’ around the house in my Bah Humbug Santa hat—while wearing soft antlers decorated with a ribbon Bow Tie o’ the Day on top. And I’m also showing off one of my CHRISTMAS VACATION Tie’s o’ the Day. Even as I rest, I am multi-tasking. No, wait—I’m multi-tieing!
We here at TIE O’ THE DAY believe that you can never have enough leg lamps of any ilk. It’s just plain true that 2 real leg lamps and 1 leg lamp Tie o’ the Day make a jolly trio in the house. When I next drive down to Deltassippi to visit Mom at the care center, I will be wearing this same tie. I wear it for her at least once every Christmas season. In fact, she has one of my A CHRISTMAS STORY leg lamps in her room there. It is tiny and plugs into a regular electrical outlet. It is visible on one of her tables or in her window most of the time. Tie o’ the Day will make Mom laugh throughout the entire visit. Mom’s short-term memory is such that she will see and enjoy the leg lamp tie the minute we walk in her room, then she’ll forget it, then 10 minutes later she will notice it again, and so on—as if every time she notices the tie, it’s the first time she’s seen it that day. (Mom loves A CHRISTMAS STORY. I think it was BT/Mercedes’ family who introduced the movie to Mom.)
For a while now, Mom has had a tendency to repeat her stories, jokes, and questions. But she still knows who we are and remembers enough about us to have conversations about our lives. She has, however, begun to ask me how many kids she had, and which one am I. She seems to remember from the early-30’s up to the mid-80’s pretty well, for the most part. Sometimes now she mixes up who did what and where. But we never correct her. We heard the stories when her memory was great, so we know who did what and where. If you happen to run into her at the care center this holiday season, I suggest you let her know who you are and who your parents are. Chances are, she’ll be able to place you or at least your family, and you can enjoy a fun conversation with her. No matter what she remembers or doesn’t remember, she’s still got her spunk, her compassionate heart, and her humor. She is still a joy to be around.
I didn’t intend to write about Mom today. The words simply fell out of my fingertips. I miss Mom every day. Lately, I can’t think about her without crying, as I’m doing now. I miss her even when I’m with her. I am already in mourning for her, though she’s still here with us. She’s Mom, but she is not wholly Mom. Pieces of her are no longer part of her. I mourn those pieces—her wildly aware and knowing love; her full-of-stories memory; and her astute cognition. Her hugs are not whole anymore either. But they are precious to me beyond any riches or success I might ever have. 💎 💰 🏆
Today’s Banned Books: I’m re-reading OF MICE AND MEN, by John Steinbeck, and Anne Frank’s DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL. Two literary classics.
I have so much more to say about the banning of books. I could write forever more addressing the topic. However, I think this will be final post about the subject—for the time being, at least. I’m sure you get the gist of how rabidly I’m against banning books. Y’all are probably ready for me to move on to lighter subjects. With that in mind, I’m wearing my rafter o’ turkeys Tie o’ the Day, in honor of Thanksgiving being just two days away.
I am writing this post about my own experience, as just one example. It’s about books and being gay. I have no so-called “gay agenda,” nor have I ever come across one, so I doubt such a thing exists—except in the mouths of pundits on TV. I am merely telling my story to make a point or two, and my story happens to be about books in a school library, and growing up as a gay teenager in a rural Utah high school, during the late 70’s and early 80’s. I’m sorry if my life offends you. I’m not sorry for my life, mind you.
Back in the olden days, when I was young, Delta High School was not just the high school. It was also the junior high. Students moved from 6th grade directly to the high school back then. 7th and 8th graders were not technically high schoolers, but we were in the high school with them. Grades 7-12 used the high school library. There were no computers there at the time. There was no internet. There were wooden card catalogs full of index cards for each book. There were books, and records, and newspapers, and prints of masterpieces of art in the DHS library. I spent my lunch time there almost every day.
Miss Hansen was in charge when I got there in 7th grade. She was an outstanding librarian, therefore, we were blessed to have a fine library—much better than libraries in schools of similar size, i.e., libraries in other small rural high schools in Utah. I know our library was exceptional because when we traveled to the other schools to compete with them in sports, I somehow managed to sneak into the opposing schools’ libraries to see what they had to offer. The DHS library out-classed them all. The DHS library was where, when I was in 7th grade, I found a novel about the post-Civil War era, which name I don’t now recall, and I first learned about Juneteenth, for example. It’s not a new “woke” thing. It’s a celebration that has been in existence since 1866. Because of that library, I have known of it since I was 12. I had no way of knowing back then that, in the 90’s, I would teach in a middle school whose student population was 100% black. I learned about black history and culture from books in the DHS library. Little did I know, those books had prepared me to be a better teacher for my middle school students. Little tidbits of what I learned in the DHS library about a culture so mysterious and far removed from my own rural, white, Mormon culture I grew up in helped me to connect with my students in ways other white teachers in my school could not. In the DHS library, I devoured every library book I had time for—about a multitude of subjects.
But the splendid DHS library lacked a key thing. It did not have any book that connected to me in one key way. I knew I was gay and I was struggling to understand it, but I found no book that reflected what I was going through. Not one. There was no character in a book that I could identify with. According to the books on the shelves, I did not even exist—or maybe I wasn’t supposed to exist. I was a good student. I was a good Mormon. But I did not exist on the shelves of my own school’s library. Nobody talked about being “gay” seriously at that time. I myself tried mightily to ignore that part of me. There were plenty of comments and jokes, though. Some were aimed directly at me. Some were just teenagers cracking gay jokes where I could hear them. Listen, I’m not whining about all of that. It made me tough. It made me savvy. All in all, I had a wonderful childhood in Delta. I was smart enough to understand that people—especially teenagers—have a tendency to either get angry or poke fun at what they don’t understand. Adults should know better, although they often don’t. These people were my friends, and I doubted their goal was to hurt me. But it caused harm to me and other gay students, nonetheless. It wasn’t okay. With every sarcastic comment, every joke, the messages piled up: because I was gay, I was a joke and had no value or morals. I was less than. I had no right to be treated with dignity. And there was no room in the community for me to be me. I never felt friendless—just sad and alien. I knew the jokes came from ignorance, not meanness. Still, they took a toll on me anyway.
I don’t recall a day at DHS when there was not at least one snide comment or joke aimed in my direction, even though I had never publicly told anyone that I was gay. Gradually, I felt smaller and smaller as my years in DHS continued. I was often suicidal. I made a few genuine but halfhearted suicide attempts. I clearly did not want to die, but it began to feel as if my community wanted me to. I felt that I was supposed to rid the community of me. I had a near-constant feeling that eradicating my “evil” self was what almost everyone seemed to want me to do—because their routine anti-gay comments told me I had no right to honorably exist as who I was. I didn’t talk to my parents about being gay when I was at DHS, because I assumed they would have no idea how to help me. And I thought that if they knew the truth about me, they might not love me as ferociously as I knew they did. (Of course, they would have, and always have loved me, but I was a dumb teenager and I wasn’t so sure back then.) I went to an ecclesiastical leader for help to change who I was, and I was surprised to find that it did me much more harm than good. I pretended to be and live as a straight person every day. Obviously, I was not very good at it. I routinely attempted to negate myself. Even as I tried to disappear, I have no doubt I developed my wide sense of humor into a kind of shield to protect the real me, by distracting others—by making them laugh. I did put up a good front.
I was fortunate to have a couple of DHS teachers who could see what was going on with me probably even better than I could. They accepted me just by having conversations with me about books and art and ballet and classical music and politics. We never referenced my sexuality. They gave me slivers of hope that I could be okay just by being me. They valued me. I had a couple of Mutual teachers who did the same. Those four incredible women are still in my prayers of gratitude every day. One day, at the end of a class, I was having a conversation with Nancy Conant (legendary DHS math teacher) about the country’s politics at the time. Without once mentioning my sexuality, she said the following to me as I was leaving her room: “Listen to me. The longer you put off being who you really are, the more people you will hurt when you finally discover you can’t pretend anymore to be someone you’re not.” I sort of understood what she meant at the time. As I found my place in the world, I understood it more deeply with each passing year. My talk with Mrs. Conant happened near the beginning of my Junior year. And that’s when I knew I had to get out of Delta. I couldn’t take not being seen as a valued human being for one more year. I knew I would literally not live through my Senior year. I was getting more serious about wanting to die. I had enough credits to graduate after my Junior year, and so I did. A week after I graduated, I moved to Ogden and started college at Weber State. Immediately, I was treated with dignity by almost everyone I met. Nobody knew me or anything about me. I could breathe as myself. And in Weber State’s Stewart Library, I found books that reflected my experience (I also found Suzanne in the Stewart library a couple of years later). I found stories that were representative of my struggles with my identity, inside bookstores everywhere I went.
I am asking you to imagine how much difference it would have made to me and other gay DHS students (Yes, I was not the only one) if there had been even one book on the DHS library shelves that reflected what we were going through. Just one book that validated our right to exist. One book that said we had value. Just one book that showed us we could have meaningful and successful futures in the larger world. A book that acknowledged we were not jokes, but human beings who could contribute much to our communities. One book that said it was possible for us to love and be loved for a lifetime. Just to stand in front of such a book on a shelf in the DHS library would have said to us and every other DHS student that we gay students were human beings and every bit as important and treasured as every other student. After providing books directly related to enhancing the public education students are offered, the very least a public high school library has a duty to do is to provide books that represent every student’s experience and worth. Not just white kids. Not just Mormon kids. Not just straight kids. Every kid in a school’s student body is owed that respect and acknowledgment by their community.
Statistically, in every culture throughout recorded history, around 1 in 10 persons born is gay. That means approximately 1 in 10 students is gay. I can attest that this statistic was pretty accurate at DHS when I was a student there, and I have no reason to think it’s any different now. A public school has no right to create a library void of books that reflect the experiences of 10% of its student population. Please keep in mind that a public school is a gift, an American right. It is not a church. And no American has the right to try to make it one. 📖 📚 📗📕📘
BTW: A final thought from me, for you to ponder: The most dangerous books are the one’s you don’t read.
